


I Just Wanna Get Warm

by IronBitch35730 (Ayita35730)



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Emily and Mike are the Soul Survivors, F/M, Post-Until Dawn (Video Game), Until Dawn (Video Game) Is Its Own Warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:16:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26674267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ayita35730/pseuds/IronBitch35730
Summary: Emily isn't doing well.
Relationships: Emily Davis/Matt Taylor (Until Dawn), Emily Davis/Mike Munroe
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	I Just Wanna Get Warm

Emily never used to have nightmares. 

Not as a little girl, not as a teenager. She never had a horror movie leave her with sweat-soaked sheets, gasping for air in the middle of the night. Not even an unpleasant jolt awake—not that she can recall anyway. 

Once, when she was eight, her dog was hit by a car in front of her. Her mother was absolutely terrified it would traumatize her, but she went to bed the next night just fine. It baffled her parents and her big brother, all of them expecting her to fall to pieces at any moment. And of course it  _ hurt _ . She thought about Puck every day, grieved for him. She just didn’t break down. Thinking back on it, she thinks it started then, but she wouldn’t notice until she was a teenager. 

The looks. The disapproval. Her family and their whispers about all the things that are wrong with her. 

Emily’s frigid.

Emily’s selfish.

Emily’s high maintenance. 

But she couldn’t change what they thought of her, she could only control what she thought of herself. She pushed herself harder, got better, got smarter. She let them believe what they wanted and she tried to soften around her friends.

Around Mike, for a while. Eventually he couldn’t handle her either.

_ “You’re fucking untouchable Em. And I’m tired of reaching.”  _

Then Matt.

God, Matt.

He was so sweet. He really was so devoted, so protective. He was always willing to step in and defend her when personally he’d rather keep the peace. He played tough, but she knew the real him. The one that he spent a week nursing a baby bird back to health the summer before everything went to hell. 

They’d been hanging out, just the two of them. She was still with Mike, but he’d drank too much the night before and had bailed out. Ashley was supposed to come too, but she ended up hanging out with Chris. So it was just them, talking, walking around the park.

Then they found the bird. Matt had looked so heartbroken when he thought it was dead and he took rescuing it so seriously—if she were normal she would have fallen in love with him then. But she wasn’t.

She isn’t. 

Because the truth is, she should have loved Matt. She should have been proud to have him, spoiled him and protected him back because he deserved it. He was just a teenager and he was in love with her, and Emily? She wanted to  _ have _ him, but she never felt the same way. Didn’t really think it was that big of a deal. They could date a while, just until she was over Mike and then they’d go back being friends. They weren’t supposed to be _ that _ serious. 

He was good for her on paper and that’s what she cared about at the time. She couldn’t just let Mike leave her  _ alone. _ Matt was right there at her side, ready to catch her and she did love him in a way. Not the right way. But there was love. 

She’d loved the others too. And they’re all dead, except for her and Mike. The only two left. Her and Mike—Mike, who pointed a gun at her. Mike, who considered fucking  _ killing  _ her. The guy she thought she was in love with. 

They don’t talk anymore. She didn’t try to push his actions to the police (well barley). She couldn’t bring herself to, knowing he was the last one. And a part of her (a small one) understood. But she couldn’t talk to him again. Not after looking him in the eyes and watching him lift that gun to her head. Watch him  _ consider _ it. 

Emily has nightmares now. 

Every night, constantly, she has nightmares. 

But she doesn’t see them. She sees that thing, over and over again, but never sees their faces. She misses them, she thinks about them, even Jessica. But she never dreams about them, their faces are just the background for the horror show her mind puts on for her every night. 

Even Matt doesn’t appear. He haunts her waking thoughts far more frequently than her dreams and she feels so much regret, so much guilt she freaking drowns in it.

But her nightmares are of herself, always. Her dying, her living, in so many different ways. 

All horrible.

She goes home. Back to her parents, back home where she never thought she’d go again. She sleeps in her childhood room and for the first time in her adult life and she falls apart. 

Her parents seem cautiously happy to dote on her, perhaps surprised that she needs them so much. Surprised she’s doing something normal, running to her parents after she was traumatized. They seem to be warming up to her, to be rethinking their ideal of her.

Funny, the first time in her life her family seems to think the best of her.

And every night, she hates herself more. 


End file.
